the thoughts of a surgeon in the notorious province of mpumalanga, south africa. comments on the private and state sector. but mostly my personal journey through surgery.

Friday, September 07, 2007

crouch, touch, hold, engage

for those of you who don't know, the rugby world cup has just started. i just watched the first game between argentina and france (the host nation). against expectations, the argentinians won. i support neither team, but it was one of the best games i've ever seen. spectacular to say the least.

our team, the springbokke have a very real chance of taking the cup this year. so all the readers of this blog, unless your team is playing, i expect you to support the bokke.

the picture above is of os du rand. he played in the 1995 squad that won the world cup and amazingly enough is in the 2007 squad that is just about to win the world cup.

It's "...pause, engage", Dr Bongi. And the "crouch" is more a bend or a stoop. I see crouch as sitting on one's haunches as in passing the perennial stool while on a hike in the veld. As far as the France-Argentina match is concerned -it equalled the organised chaos theme of the opening ceremony. (The latter was a refreshing alternative to the by now boring chorus line girls one sees at similar events.) The Argentinians won the game before the kick-off. I have yet to see rugby players exuding such emotion while singing their national anthem. The jovial Mr Spreadbury made strange rulings and on the other hand failed to make rulings.(I see that England is taking on Dr Schwab's colonial American Eagles team later today.)

someone, i see the us actually scored a try against england. us south africans interpret that as england being no threat to us. sorry. i find it amazing that you can't get it on tv there. a national team is at a world cup and it seems they have little support from home. our team's last stop before they left was the president's office. in france they visited mandela who happened to be there at the time.

anonymous, yes you're right, but i suppose i'm thinking back to the 'crouch and hold, engage' days. it's getting a bit too complicated for a front row to remember these days. i like your description of a crouch. we knew it as a boskak.

next anonymous, i personally think the only threat to the boks is the all blacks and after their ok-ish performance against italy, i think we can take them. i didn't see the game that austrailia played yesterday, but my brother down under sent me a message saying that george is not the smallest man on the field for the first time in his life. he is the 16th smallest.

bongi, i did get to watch the match with my father-in-law. we both cheered when the US scored their try. we call that a win seeing that 2/3 of the team are considered amateurs and we didn't concede the bonus point like our neighbors conceded to Wales (to my father-in-laws delight) ... i have a feeling south africa is going to put a good ole fashion beating on us. oh well

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the aim of this blog is to give insight into the mind of a particular surgeon, me. although every story is loosely based on fact, patients have been changed suitably to protect their identity. the opinions expressed are mine alone and are not meant to be considered medical advice or the opinion of any institution.